1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a tape printer, and more particularly, to a tape printer that evenly spaces a plurality of input characters and prints the evenly spaced characters within the length of a predetermined printing range.
2. Description of Related Art
Heretofore, a number of proposals have been made regarding improvements in small-size tape printers that print desired character strings along a printing tape about 10 mm wide. A tape printer proposed by the applicant of the present application, and disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent No. 1-152070 is capable of printing full size and double size characters, and of selectively printing full size characters either in center printing mode or in lower-side printing mode. In center printing mode, the tape printer prints full size characters at the center of the tape (across its width); in lower-side printing mode, the tape printer prints the characters on the lower-side of the tape (across its width).
The dot pattern of characters printed by tape printers is generally 24 dots (high) by 24 dots (across) for full size characters, or 48 dots (high) by 48 dot (across) for double size characters. Dot pattern data are stored beforehand in a nonvolatile memory (e.g., ROM). The size of characters to be printed is selected from among a plurality of character size options. Once a character size is selected, the corresponding character spacing (i.e., the amount of spacing between adjacent characters) is automatically determined to have some predefined value.
In many instances, for example, the tape printer is used to print a title or information regarding the contents of a given file onto a printing tape, the printed tape being adhered (pasted) onto an appropriate position of a casing of the file. In such instances, it is often desired to expand the character string representing the file title or contents up to the entire length of the pasting position, the characters remaining evenly spaced when printed within that length.
However, as mentioned above, in existing tape printers, the spacing between characters to be printed is predefined depending on the selected character size. That is, the characters may not be spaced evenly for printing over a given length.
One conventional solution to the above problem is to insert one or more spaces after each character as they are input by an operator. One disadvantage of this solution is that the printed character string is simply extended by the number of added spaces; it is still difficult to equalize the printing position of the character string with the length of the pasting range. It is also difficult for an operator to insert spaces which will result in all characters being equally spaced within a given label length.